It's sort of strange how we bumped into each other again after all these years.  

On Monday afternoon I promised a missionary friend I would phone her soon and set up a time when we could have them over for a meal.  So bright and early Tuesday morning I phoned her.  But her phone was turned off.  Well, I could send her a text message, even though I truly hate texting.  I labored over a rather long text and then sent it off.    There was no response.  On Wednesday morning (that's today) I tried phoning again.  After several tries I finally got through.  Since my friend is an American, I naturally spoke in English.  But the man who answered was having trouble understanding me.  When I switched to French he quickly figured out that I had the wrong number.  Now what was I supposed to do?  I didn't have any other way of contacting our friends.  Of course I could always go to their house.  They don't live too far away.  This afternoon I was knocking on their gate as the rain started.  No response.  Finally I noticed a door bell off to the side.  Pushing it I could hear a loud buzzer.  About that time a neighbor lady called over to me to say that they were not home.  She had just watched them all drive out the gate.  I asked this Cameroonian lady if she happened to have their phone number, which she did not.  The only thing left to do was to go back to Shiloh and try again another day.  As I turned from the gate, someone opened it.  I turned back around and there she was!

"Amelia" I exclaimed!  We hugged and stood in the rain laughing.  How long had it been, I wondered?  I asked how old her baby girl was now.  When she replied "Sixteen," I knew she had made a mistake.  Maybe six years old, or even ten, but surely not sixteen!  How could the years fly by so fast?  Amelia proudly told me she had five other children, too.   

She was just a young wife with a newborn baby girl when she came to work for us.  Amelia had never held a job before.  She did everything wrong.  We struggled to teach her things, but she just wasn't willing to learn.  After months of trying and getting nowhere, we finally let her go.  Two or three years later we saw her at an event we attended.  She came running across the room to greet us.  She wanted to let us know that she was sorry for all the trouble that she caused us.  And she was so grateful for the things she learned from us.  She reported that she was working for another missionary family.  Every day she was doing her best to put into practice all the things we had tried to teach her.  She realized too late her mistakes.  But she was so glad to have that opportunity to see us and apologize.

Amelia is the only person who formerly worked for us over these last 25 years who has ever come back to apologize and to thank us for what we taught them.  She is one in a million. That's why we were both so thrilled to bump into each other after all these years.